Control Measures

India treats the right to clean water as a fundamental right under the Constitution. The primary statute is the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, whose Sections 17 to 40 prohibit polluting a stream or well through the disposal of polluting matter. The Central and State Pollution Control Boards are empowered to advise the respective governments on all matters concerning the prevention and control of water pollution, while the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) is the Central Government's nodal agency for planning, promoting, coordinating, and overseeing India's environmental and forestry policies and programmes overall. On the prevention side, recommended practices include regulating or controlling pollutant discharge at the point of generation, pre-treating wastewater with scientific methods before it reaches municipal treatment systems, setting up dedicated Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) and Effluent Treatment Plants (ETPs), regulating or restricting synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, and building public awareness and involvement, which is considered essential to any control effort. Two concrete government initiatives illustrate this framework in action: the Namami Gange (National Mission for Clean Ganga) Programme, approved as a Flagship Programme of the Union Government in June 2014 with a ₹20,000 crore budget outlay, aims to achieve the twin objectives of effective pollution abatement and the conservation and rejuvenation of the river Ganga. Despite these measures, a CPCB assessment reported in The Hin …